In diagnosing a pathology, a doctor exercises his/her medical experience and knowledge to identify a suspected diagnosis based on a set of reported and/or observed patient symptoms. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of this methodology depends on the subjective ability of the individual doctor to collect data on patient signs and symptoms and select among the possible diagnoses. Additionally, even the most qualified doctors, for whatever reason, may not consider lesser known or seemingly unlikely diagnoses. On the other hand, machines such as medical expert systems can not replace a creative, open-minded, insightful physician. Complete (or even substantial) reliance on a machine for diagnosing a patient in many cases would be deemed unwise. Thus, a solution is needed for assisting a doctor, regardless of his/her expertise or training, in diagnosing a patient pathology.
In addition, various medical professionals including nurses, doctors, physician assistants, laboratory technicians, and specialists such as radiologists can be involved with the diagnosis of a patient. Normally, general patient data is initially obtained by a nurse and then provided to the patient's primary care physician ("PCP") who proceeds to examine and diagnose the patient. In some cases, the PCP will require that a diagnostic task such as a laboratory test or a medical imaging procedure be performed in order to help pinpoint or confirm a suspected diagnosis. The PCP will usually take steps to initiate execution of this task, but he/she may not provide the task performer with suitable patient data or precise enough instructions to ensure that the task is performed both efficiently and effectively in connection with the suspected diagnosis. In some cases, the task performer (e.g., radiologist) needs to contact the PCP in order to acquire necessary patient information. Unfortunately, this takes time away from both the task performer as well as that of the PCP. In other cases, the PCP requests a diagnostic task that is inappropriate or not needed which unnecessarily adds to the cost of healthcare; some tests, such as a magnetic resonance image ("MRI") may be extremely costly.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method for assisting a physician in accurately and efficiently diagnosing a patient. Moreover, what is needed is a system for managing and improving the diagnostic process including the recommendation and performance of diagnostic tasks.